Good Game Get! NobyNobyBoy iPhone/iPod Touch
Katamari Damacy put creator Keita Takahashi on a fairly high podium, and since then countless Katamari Damacy sequels have been released by the assholes at Namco and the franchise sadly has been severely diluted.
I recently picked up Katamari Damacy for the iPod Touch and it was such a let down as the seemingly sensical tilt controls were actually really awful and un-tweakable leaving the game very broken, uninspired, and just an all around example of how much Namco has been attempting to milk the Katamari series.
I think Takahashi had been pretty jaded by all of that, so for his next game, I think that he set out to create something so ridiculous, so fun, so unable to make money (only $5 on the Playstation Store!) that it would really satisfy his desire to be the introverted, un-famous game designer that he wanted to be with Katamari Damacy.
He succeeded. NobyNobyBoy is totally weird, but oh so delightful. Its less of a traditional video game, and more of a video toy. Of course it has a goal, which is stretching Girl throughout the galaxy, but thats really just background noise when compared to the meat of the game, which just so happens to be centered around nonsensical fun.
The game received mixed reactions and reviews, but I wonder if that hardly matters to Takahashi now that he understands how a company like Namco can take something and really ruin it’s value.
Oddly enough though, Takahashi recently released another game through Namco, and also oddly enough Namco actually released it, despite the terrible sales it’s most likely going to have.
The game is essentially like it’s bigger PS3 brother except it’s a top-down 2D rendition complete with all the cool iPhone/iPod Touch features you’d expect from a game like this. You can do mostly everything you can do on the PS3 version and you can even set your device up so that using GPS you can stretch boy across a map while you walk, ride, or drive.
Even cooler, all of the stretching you do with Boy inside of the NobyNobyBoy app can be added to the overall Girl length which includes Boy lengths from the PS3 version.
The game is absolutely full of surprises as every time you start the app you get new music and new objects to play around with your fingers, Boy, and the accelerometer. You can even take screen shots and send them via eMail to someone while in the app.
The game/toy is wonderful and if you want to pick it up, you can search for it, or you can go to categories as the game is listed in the Productivity apps section of the App Store, but you can type reminders on Boy’s body so I guess that kind of helps with productivity, but it’s mostly just sweet irony.